Patch, Dye, Mend
with Laura Kung & Melanie Hoff
5 to 9 pm at Cuchifritos

A sewing & natural dye workshop to spread anarchist feminist manifestos and turn excess tote bags into essential pockets.

China Residencies & Cuchifritos invite you to a closing party for the exhibition Meme Tactics, where you'll be able to bring Amy Suo Wu's Thunderclap patches and ribbons with you off the walls and out into the world! Designer & textile artist Laura Kung will demonstrate natural dye techniques with food scraps, and artist & educator Melanie Hoff will teach pocket sewing, because our clothes deserve proper pockets too. Bring your own clothes to embellish with He Yin-Zhen's radical writings, your items that need mending, and your favorite item that you would wear more, if only it had pockets. And rid yourselves of your bag of bags accumulated from conferences, festivals, and swag and any other excess fabric that deserves a better life! We'll close out the night with Fei Liu's performance about/with/for/while imbibing Oriental Beauty 东方美人 tea, to think about how to connect steam power to the patriarchal anthropocene's devastation upon feminized agricultural labor.

Notes: If you would like to reserve a specific Thunderclap patch, please let us know as stocks are running low (only 13 left!)

More on Meme Tactics: chinaresidencies.com/news/270
Melanie Hoff: https://melanie-hoff.com/
Laura Kung: @lauranade
Amy Suo Wu: http://amysuowu.net
Fei Liu: http://www.trytobegood.com/

About the teaching artists:
Laura Kung works in between design and art using textiles as a medium and introspective tool. The artist practices deliberately slow methods that counter antiquated industrial standards of perfection to evoke contemplation, a sense
of well-being, and balance. After graduating from Cornell University in Fiber Science & Apparel Design, she worked as a designer for Zero + Maria Cornejo for seven years, leading color and fabric development as well at the footwear collections. She has also designed costumes for opera and theatre productions. Kung is currently pursuing her MFA in Textiles at Parsons School of Design in New York.

Melanie Hoff Melanie Hoff is an artist and educator examining the role technology plays in social organization and reinforcing hegemonic structures. They study how platforms and processes — including algorithms, data collection, social media, networks, simulation, and ritual — yield distinct modes of social organization and reinforce existing systems of power. Melanie writes software, teaches Critical Interaction Design at Rutgers University, organizes Code Societies and teaches at the School for Poetic Computation. They are a founding member of the Cybernetics Library and Soft Surplus.

Fei Liu 刘斐 is a New York-based Chinese designer, artist, writer, and DJ exploring digital empathy and the narrative potential of interfaces.

Getting there:
Cuchifritos is inside Essex Market. The closest entrance is on 214 Broome St, and the gallery space is between Czar's barber shop and Zerza's Moroccan couscous spot, across the way from Dominican Cravings (who make the very best passion fruit juice!)

The market and gallery space are on the ground floor and are wheelchair accessible, there is an accessible bathroom on the ground floor.